Can these things be real? Surely they are acting. What relation have they to the truth as we see it in theory? What connection with our certain hopes, our deep desires, our craving and infinite thought? ‘In respect of itself, it is a good life; but in respect it is a shepherd’s life, it is nought.’ The soul ties its shoe; the mind washes its hands in a basin. All is incongruous. _Shallow._ Certain, ’tis certain; very sure, very sure; death, as the Psalmist saith, is certain to all; all shall die. How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford fair? _Silence._ Truly, cousin, I was not there. _Shallow._ Death is certain.—Is old Double, of your town, living yet? _Silence._ Dead, sir. _Shallow._ Dead. See! See! He drew a good bow,—and dead. He shot a fine shoot. John of Gaunt loved him well, and betted much money on his head.—Dead! He would have clapped i’ the clout at fourscore, and carried you a forehandshaft, a fourteen and fourteen and-a-half, that it would have done a man’s heart good to see.—How a score of ewes now? _Silence._ Thereafter as they be; a score of ewes may be worth ten pounds. _Shallow._ And is Double dead!— It is because Sydney Smith had so little of this Shakespearian humour, that there is a glare in his pages, and that in the midst of his best writing, we sigh for the soothing superiority of quieter writers. Sydney Smith was not only the wit of the first Edinburgh, but likewise the divine. He was, to use his own expression, the only clergyman who in those days ‘turned out’ to fight the battles of the Whigs. In some sort this was not so important. A curious abstinence from religious topics characterises the original Review. There is a wonderful omission of this most natural topic of speculation in the lives of Horner and Jeffrey. In truth, it would seem that, living in the incessant din of a Calvinistic country, the best course for thoughtful and serious men was to be silent—at least they instinctively thought so. They felt no involuntary call to be theological teachers themselves, and gently recoiled from the coarse admonition around them. Even in the present milder time, few cultivated persons willingly think on the special dogmas of distinct theology. They do not deny them, but they live apart from them: they do not disbelieve them, but they are silent when they are stated. They do not question the existence of Kamschatka, but they have no call to busy themselves with Kamschatka; they abstain from peculiar tenets. Nor in truth is this, though much aggravated by existing facts, a mere accident of this age. There are some people to whom such a course of conduct is always natural: there are certain persons who do not, as it would seem cannot, feel all that others feel; who have, so to say, no _ear_ for much of religion: who are in some sort out of its reach. ‘It is impossible,’ says a late divine of the Church of England, ‘not to observe